


Treading On Stars

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Richard Jury - Martha Grimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-20
Updated: 2006-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:52:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1637537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I am not yours, nor lost in you.  Not lost, although I long to be."  In an alternate take on The Old Contemptibles, Melrose takes a daring risk to rescue Vivian from her engagement.  Melrose/Vivian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Treading On Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my wonderful beta, wanderingfool, who first introduced me to Martha's wonderful works, and to the denziens of longpidcc, who have encouraged my fan fiction over the years. Thanks also to otahyoni who encouraged this Yuletide plot bunny.   
>  Although I'm a Melrose/Bea fan at heart, this was wonderfully fun to write. If anyone is curious, the lines in the summary and in the story are from "I Am Not Yours" by Sarah Teasdale. 
> 
> Written for TeaRoses

 

 

"What do you mean, you only think Venice is all right?"

"Oh, I didn't mean-" On the receiving end of a particularly withering stare from Vivian, Melrose twisted his fingers in his hands, directing his gaze down to the canal below, the water glistening with an iridescent sheen. "It's just too flashy."

"Flashy?" There was more amusement than accusation in Vivian's tone, and Melrose felt it was safe to look up. "How many Bentleys do you own again?"

Melrose made a strangled, sputtering sort of protest. "One of them was inherited. And they're investments."

"Investments that you can drive." Vivian leaned back against the railing, her auburn hair flashing copper for a moment in the fading light. All she needed was a pomegranate in her hand - she was already Rossetti's Persephone, with her very own Italian Hades. "You own half of Long Piddleton. You used to be Lord Ardry, and I know you still carry around those cards. I don't think you can win this argument."

"Witty rejoiner from the soon-to-be Lady Dracula. For his wedding gift, is he going to get you your own little cof-" Melrose winced as Vivian darted out and grabbed his wrist. Melrose always thought she was far stronger than she seemed, which was fragile as Venetian glass. The resemblance was not total, however. Vivian, for all her poetry, remained stubbornly opaque.

"Why do you keep saying that? He's a good man and I'm going to marry him." Vivian slowly released her death grip on Melrose's wrist, and he wished he could bring himself to anger her again, just to keep her hand on his wrist.

"Eventually." Vivian may have stubbornly insisted on her marriage but she seldom defended or even gave her reasons. Melrose, the eternal optimist, read much into her silences. "You don't give Marshall and I nearly enough credit."

"There are a lot of things I don't give you and Marshall," Vivian said, one elegantly arched eyebrow raised. "Where is he? Shouldn't he be here, aiding and abetting?"

"Oh, you know him. He brought a whole suitcase of things to be appraised." Melrose waved his hands in front of him, as to emphasize his unfamiliarity with Marshall's wherabouts or actions. "Besides, both of us were eager for some time apart. Have you ever traveled with him before?"

"I can imagine." Vivian pursed her lips, turning a giggle into a lopsided smile. "Did he not give you the window seat?"

"No! And then he fell asleep on my shouder. Did you know he drools?" Melrose gave the sigh of the long suffering. "And he's the only decent company left in Long Piddleton, with you gone."

"I know," Vivian said, without the slightest trace of egotism. "When are you going back?"

Melrose raised an eyebrow. "So eager to be rid of us already?"

An indignant flush came to Vivian's cheeks, already tinged a light olive by the Italian sun. "I didn't mean anything by it, you know that."

"Yes, I do, and I'm a horrid man for teasing you anyway." He wanted to kiss Vivian's hand, but he wasn't keen on feeling that hand strike him across the cheek. "We're staying until we can talk you out of your engagement, or Thursday, whichever comes first. I was thinking of going to San Gimignano tomorrow." Another impulse, this one far more practical, pushed its way to his lips. "Come with me! It's bad enough I have to put up with him constantly at home."

Vivian paused, mulling over the thought. "I'll meet you tomorrow morning at the hotel, then? If you can actually get yourself out of bed."

"I can be a morning person for important things," Melrose retorted, even as a warm thrill of delight ran all the way to his toes.

"Now I'm an important thing?" There was a veneer of affront in Vivian's question, but underlying it was a bewildered sort of affection.

Melrose jammed his hands into his coat pockets, shrugging his shoulders as if his answer was the most casual, breezy statement and not a nervous, cryptic sort of confession. "You've always been an important thing."

***

"Smell the air! Now isn't this better than Venice?" The air was crisp, with the lingering scent of the afternoon rain, redolent of rosemary and pine.

"Much healthier for your lungs, I imagine." Vivian leaned across the stone wall, her gloved hands dangling over it. The breeze caught her hair, blowing stray tresses off her face. "Should you even be traveling yet?"

"Hmm? Oh, yes, right, traveling." Pneumonia had been an effective cover story for missing one of Vivian's attempted weddings. Remembering his cover story, however, was a bit trickier. Melrose felt a guilty flush in his cheeks, a patricularly vexing trait.

Vivian turned, an enigmatic smile on her lips. "You're a miserable liar."

Melrose pursed his lips and exhaled. "You should know that I'm getting better at the whole lying business. Working undercover will do that for you."

"God help Richard and Scotland Yard." The smile wavered, if only for a moment, and in that brief snatch of time Melrose wondered if his initial happiness at Richard's engagement, and hence romantic unavailability, was ill-founded, at least in regards to the plan to save Vivian from her engagement.

"I'm a valuable asset," Melrose said. He had proven his helpfulness to Richard in the few years he knew him. He and Vivian went back years longer and she was dearer to him than anyone. But what was Melrose worth to her?

She turned back to the countryside below, one hand raised to her temple to brush away an errant strand of hair. She looked so lonely, so lost, and in that moment Melrose would do anything to save her, even if her engagement was the least of things from which she needed rescue.

"It's getting late," she said, and Melrose realized if was going to be the hero, he needed to be the hero now. "We should head back soon."

Whatever he did, they couldn't go back to Venice, not yet. He needed more time, even an hour, to turn this desperate, protective urge into a plan. Even Vivian couldn't postpone her wedding forever.

"Not before dinner," Melrose said, shaking his head at her protestations. "I heard about a heavenly restauraunt we have to try."

"Fine, fine." Vivian tugged her shawl against the increasing chill. She looked at Melrose for a long moment and finally shook her head. "You're always thinking with your stomach."

It's worse, he thought with a sudden exuberant panic. This time I'm thinking with my heart.

***

"That dessert was exquisite. What was it called, again?"

"Zabaglione." The words rolled off Vivian's tongue like wine, like honey. The textbook definition of mellifluous.

"That's beautiful." Melrose had imbibed perhaps one glass more than he intended, fortifying himself with liquid courage, but the warmth suffusing his body had nothing to do with the 1979 Chateau Mouton Rothschild and everything to do with Vivian, whose arm was linked in his. "You're absolutely beautiful."

"Melrose, you don't need to-"

"Does he tell you that you're beautiful?"

"Yes, he does." Vivian came to a dead stop, but didn't pull her arm away. That alone gave Melrose the encouragement to ask a truly daring question. Or incredibly stupid.

"Does he make you happy?" Melrose turned, catching Vivian's hand as she pulled away, a flash of anger and an unnamed emotion that imbued him with that stupid, reckless courage. "If he makes you happy, truly and honestly happy, I'll stop."

"He-" Vivian seldom lost her calm, and given the emotional turmoil that dominated her life, Melrose was nothing short of astonished. But her could hear the faintest tremble in her voice and could feel it in her hand. "He does the best he can. He tries, but I don't know if there's anyone who could make me happy. I can settle for being merely content."

"Call me vain or egotistical - I know you've done it before, but I could make you happy." Melrose squeezed her hand reassuringly. "I like to think I've made you happy. Maybe I was just annoying you, but let me try to make you truly happy. I would do anything."

Melrose expected his heartfelt and possibly very naive assertion to be rebuffed, at the very least interrupted, but not by Vivian's lips pressing with an eager urgency against his.

"Anything?"

***

Melrose was positive that any moment, Vivian would change her mind (come to her senses, a voice insisted), another sort of light entirely would come into her eyes and she would bolt into the night. Even now, as he fumbled with the absurdly ornate key to the hotel room, he glanced at her nervously, but she clung to his arm with a fixed determination.

Like a prisoner going to the firing line, the voice said.

The door opened, finally, with a satisfying click, and no sooner had he shut it behind them than Vivian clutched at the lapels of his jacket and pulled him into a dizzying kiss.

Melrose mustered up the last of his self-doubt and broke off the kiss, cupping his hands around Vivian's already bare shoulders. Her shawl pooled around her in a soft, undulating pool of fabric. When did she take that off? "Vivian," he said, praying she would say yes even if the voice kept insisting she would say no as soon as she had the chance. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

Vivian nodded, and wondrously, she smiled - not her usual "Melrose, what the hell have you done now" smile but something more fragile yet infinitely brighter, like a new star. "Faint heart never won fair lady."

"You're going to seduce me with cliches, now," Melrose said, his confidence galloping far ahead of his doubt, which lagged far behind. He didn't know, ultimately, if he could have taken advantage of Vivian's lonely desperation - this bravado, whether true or false, was almost too good to be believed.

"Not cliches, with other people's words," she said, tracing her finger under Melrose's chin and beneath the collar of his shirt, where he was certain she'd feel his pulse fluttering wildly. "I don't quite have any words for this." She tugged at his tie, and Melrose didn't quite remember anything in her poetry that was appropriate for the moment.

"Usually, words are somewhat superfluous and monosyllabic," Melrose said, hitching his breath as Vivian slid the tie off his neck and held it between her hands. He was so very grateful at that particular instant that all his ties were pure silk.

Vivian closed her eyes, twisting the soft gray fabric beneath her fingers. After a moment's thought, she opened them, with an expression clear and bright as a winter morning.

"Yet I am I, who long to be lost as light is lost in light." She was so very earnest, placing her fledgling happiness in Melrose's hands, and he refused to let it flicker out in his care. He took one of her hands, the thin layer of silk between their skin, and brushed his lips against her forehead.

"I was certain you were going to quote Yeats."

"Those would be superfluous words," Vivian said, pressing against Melrose's chest, and he felt her soft laughter. "I already know you'd tread softly."

Melrose leaned over and buried his nose in her hair, breathing in her scent, which smelled faintly of lemon. "Lighter than air," he said. "Now is it my turn?"

Vivian laughed again, and this time she nearly fell out of his embrace. "You're mocking me," he said, looking at her with an impish smile. "You're not the only one who knows poetry."

"All you know is Rimbaud," Vivian said, dancing nearly out of Melrose's reach. "All that melancholy drivel is hardly the thing-" Vivian gasped as Melrose wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her into the air, giving her a half spin. He set her down, breathless, but she had breath enough when he kissed her.

"Then I'll have to try something new," Melrose said, and as he kissed her again, enfolding light in light, he realized that he didn't have any words for this, as well.

***

Melrose opened his eyes to the sound of water, a veritable deluge of it. His chest tightened, and in the seemingly infinite distance between his hand and the curve of Vivian's shoulder, he was certain she wouldn't be there. But she was there, faintly olive and soft and already awake.

"I didn't think you would be up this early," she said, as he turned towards her. His nearsightedness softened her edges, like a living watercolor, like the rain was blurring her form.

"How long have you been awake?" He tentatively reached one hand across her waist, resting it on her hip when she curled into his touch. Her skin felt enticingly warm, as if it was a map marked terra novum. Well, slightly novum.

"Half an hour or so. I thought, I honestly thought, I would take a shower, get dressed, and ask you to take me back, that this was a mistake. But it would just be running away again. I've been running all my life from anything that might make me happy. Happiness was dangerous, it was asking to have your heart broken and everything you knew shattered. So I thought, perhaps, I was wrong, and it's all a little strange, and a bit frightening." She paused to take a breath, tilting her head, and Melrose felt her eyes bore into his with a startling honesty and not a little anxiety. "And so I decided to stay here, and think about what I should do now. About what we should do now?"

Melrose could have done a thousand things, but he simply leaned his forehead against hers, raising his hand to stroke her cheek. "Whatever you think we should do. Unless it involves me dueling with your fiancee, but you could probably talk me into that."

Vivian's laughter both calmed and fueled his giddy elation, but there was a trace of genuine worry in her voice. "No, no dueling, but I'll need time to end things properly. I owe him that much, at least."

"Such a good egg," he said, kissing her forehead. Vivian couldn't consciously hurt anyone, even with a sledgehammer and the conscious will to do so. "I won't hurry you, well-" he paused, chuckling softly. "I'll try not to. I'm usually a patient man."

"You're practically a saint," Vivian said, lazily tracing his jaw with her finger.

"I think they just might disqualify me now, especially after-"

"Melrose!" As Vivian hooked one leg around him and kissed him with even more intensity than the early morning storm pounding on the window, Melrose was certain any future petitions for sainthood were a lost cause.

***

"Where have you two been? I thought you said you were going to San Gimignano?" Marshall stood up from a lobby table, giving both Melrose and Vivian a stern glare, as if they were tardy children. Hell, that's probably exactly what Marshall was thinking.

"We're a day late. We assumed, perhaps naively, you could take care of yourself for one day." Melrose said. "But if you're done getting your knickknacks appraised," he continued, enjoying every twitch in Marshall's facial expressions, "we can head home early."

"It's been so long since I've been home," Vivian said, before Marshall had the chance to question the change in plans. Melrose could not wait to see the perfect 'o' of shock when Marshall finally figured things out. "Melrose convinced me to come back for a visit."

"Did he now?" Marshall looked Melrose up and down, as if he was the one doing the appraising. "Well, Viv-Viv, if he was so successful in getting you to visit, perhaps he can do it again and make you stay in Long Piddleton."

"Oh I don't know," Vivian said, and it took all of Melrose's poor self-composure not to react to her response. "I might need a lot of convincing."

 


End file.
